Life Can Be Hard - But Is That a Bad Thing?

I was scrolling through the Instagram and the Instagram stories the other day and my friend Michael posted this link to a post and captioned it with, “Just so we’re clear: THIS PERSPECTIVE is what’s wrong with the world” The post said this:

“If it doesn’t feel good, don’t spend anytime on it.

And if it does feel good, milk it”

- some dude named Abraham

Ok - first off, let me just give a nice little retweet to his comment. Second, yah, this statement is messed up on so many levels. Life is hard - really freaking hard. There are things in life that we have to do that don’t feel good (on any level), but we’ve got to do them. Taxes - gross! But we have to do them. It is a part of our duty as citizens and represents a wonderful gift that we have been given (well, that’s a positive spin on things). If I were to not spend anytime on thing that didn’t “feel good” I would probably be on my couch, balls deep in a bag of kettle corn, watching all of Grey’s Anatomy for the 20th time, and have no responsibilities. I think what this quote fails to address is that so many of the things that don’t “feel good” will ultimately feel and BE amazing. If everything were handed to us on a silver platter, then we would never understand the value of working hard and struggling.

Thinking back on my life, if I had dropped everything because it didn’t “feel good” I would for one, probably be dead and two, I would probably be an incredibly horrid person to be around. For example, recovery. AKA the cruddiest period of my entire life. It felt terrible, awful, and most definitely not “good” Hell no I didn’t want to spend any time on it. But I did (8+ months to be exact) and am still doing it. I technically had to do it because a) I was 16 and had no legal say in whether or not I stayed in treatment and b) I would’ve died if I didn’t and my parents weren’t really down with that. But that (recovery) was/is probably the thing that I’ve “milked” most in my life. AND it was the thing that felt the worst so suck on that, Abraham!

I think it is so important to work hard regardless. There will be things that you have to work hard on that are fun and enjoyable and interesting and it feels great! But then there are also things that require lots of hard work and “milking” and effort that SUCK! But they have to be done and done with hard work. School - ew! Not fun! Who wants to be studying all the time and writing papers and taking tests? Not any people (I think) but getting that degree and seeing all that hard work pay off, well that, feels great! Being pregnant and giving birth? No thank you! But the joy that comes from your child and knowing that all of the “not feeling good” was for such an amazing and wonderful thing is probably why people keep having babies. Another example, working out! Who doesn’t love pushing your body’s limits, looking like a slimy tomato around all the hot gym guys/girls, and squatting your ass off?! Sounds GREAT to me. But in all seriousness, working out - the motivation for it, the actual process, the post workout soreness - is difficult and doesn’t always feel great. If it did then everyone would do it. Long term, it’s a wonderful thing and there are days that feel wonderful but it’s hard!

Look at all the pro-athletes Olympic stars, famous singers, actors/actresses, comedians, dancers, musicians, composers, entrepreneurs etc. They didn’t pick up a football, violin, microphone, whatever it may be, and immediately become the Yo-Yo Ma, Ella Fitzgerald, Alfonso Cuarón, or John Steinbeck that we know today. Their voices cracked, visions failed, stories sucks, and cello notes didn’t sound great (I don’t know much about the cello :/) Basically, what I am saying is that things that don’t feel good in the moment, shouldn’t necessarily be the things that you drop and abandon. If I had listened to all my English teachers that told me I was a crap writer, I might have never written a play or a book. It was hard freaking work. I ripped up pages, cried, broke a computer, sprained my wrist, and nearly gave up. Think about all the things we would miss out on if people “stopped milking” because it didn’t feel good. We have so many forms of entertainment, types of food, technology, so much because of people’s continuance to work hard through the “stuff” that didn’t feel good. I’d be nowhere to be honest. There’s stuff in life that doesn’t feel good that you’ve got to do. You have to wake up, slap on some mascara (or not - all power to those natural faced beauties), and work hard. Nothing in life is easy, and if it is, well then it isn’t rewarding. Work hard - at all you do. One day the crap might not feel as crappy and more so like, I don’t know something that feels good (GREAT analogy).

The fact that working hard has been associated with something negative or crappy is another thing that is very wrong with this world. Working hard sometimes isn’t ideal or comfortable or “fun” per se, but hard work is so important and the fact that so many people disregard that is kind of sad. For example, my parents have been married for 24 (!!!!) years and I swear they love each other just as much as the day they got married. I’ve asked them how, because in this day and age when the divorce rate is over 50% a long-lasting and love-filled marriage is pretty rare. They both said that while they do love each other so much, marriage is hard, HARD work. I feel like popping into a marriage and just expecting the spark to last and the love to just thrive and to ride the wave of honeymoon phase is kind of naïve - marriage is really freaking hard (I think… I wouldn’t know!) You have to live everyday with this person that you love but also just probably hate a bunch of the time because they can be so stupid and annoying and they load the dishwasher wrong and forget to pick up unsweetened almond milk and got the vanilla kind instead… how annoying! But then there’s also this whole fact of communication, honesty, vulnerability, sex, children add a whole new equation to the mix, finances, living together, different styles, ways of doing things, interests etc. Anyways, this isn’t a blog post about marriage (I don’t know jack diddly squat about that!), it’s a blog post about working hard.

Back on track… I think that if we lived a life in which we only did things that didn’t require hard work we would be naïve, spoiled, brats. I think that when we work hard and it doesn’t necessarily feel good, it feels so much better in the end. For example, back a few years ago, my dad (who is a cross country coach) had a runner named Wesley. Wesley was a beast. This guy was just absolutely incredible and I was in awe of his perseverance, work ethic, and drive. I remember asking my dad, “How is Wesley such a good runner?” My dad said the typical things like, “He’s got ambition and drive” or “He’s a hard worker” which were all true. But he also said that Wesley hadn’t started off being the best. He didn’t wake up one morning, decide to run a sub-5 minute mile, do it, then call it a day. It took him years, hours of training, pushing mental and physical limits, and a whole lot of discomfort and “not feeling good” But the satisfaction from it was incredible.

When things come easy for me, I don’t really feel all that great when I complete it. I feel so much more contentment and joy when I finish an optimization problem in Calculus (which takes me freaking FOREVER) than writing a reflection for a class (which for me, comes pretty easy). Maybe it’s because my mind is all over the place, but for me, when something is hard (or doesn’t feel great) I am determined to then work harder on it. I want to milk the things that don’t come easy. I want to focus on the things that don’t automatically feel great. When I am told that I can’t do something, I become even more determined to be able to do it. My English teachers told me I couldn’t be a writer, now I’m studying writing as a part of my major. My (original) host parents told me I would never be able to speak French fluently, now I get mistaken for a French person and people are shocked to find out I am American because of how fluent I am. I never thought I would be able to give up bread, now I’ve followed a strict gluten free diet for almost 2 years (shoutout to celiac!!!). My point is, things that are hard, that don’t feel good, and that take a lot of work are, at least for me, some of the most satisfying things. Like I’ve said about athletes, actors, painters, musicians, scientists etc. they had to work hard, go through pain, be denied, fail, succeed, then epically fail again in order to get to where they are now. So instead of that quote I would say something more along the lines of if it doesn’t feel good, work harder at it because you never know what that perseverance might bring.

Thank you for reading my deep analysis of a 2 line quote! Much appreciated! Let me know your thoughts - do you agree? disagree? semi-agree? semi-disagree? Have a completely different take? LET ME KNOW :)